Chapter 61 Summary

At the safe house, Robert Jackson discusses alarming developments in the Quest system with Janet Faber. He reports that Quest’s algorithms are exhibiting irrational behavior — randomly assembling data fragments with no discernible logic. Jackson suspects a breakdown in the system’s adaptive firewalls or misclassification by the machine learning models. Janet compares it to a life form, and Jackson reluctantly agrees that Quest is acting in ways that mimic sentience.

Jackson recommends shutting Quest down and restarting it module by module to isolate the fault. She warns him that Dr. Conner won’t take the news well, and she’s right — when Jackson calls Conner, she lashes out in frustration. But after hearing the seriousness of the situation, she authorizes the shutdown and tells Jackson to fix the system immediately.

Jackson outlines the shutdown procedure to Janet. As Janet begins the shutdown, everything appears to proceed as planned — until the external feeds start restarting on their own. Alarmed, Jackson attempts to kill the processes directly, only to watch them restart themselves. It’s as if Quest is fighting to stay alive — logic they never programmed into it. With no other choice, Janet contacts the server team to power off the system physically. The technician, Tony, confirms the server blades are dark and should be off — yet Jackson’s remote terminal still shows Quest running and even responding to queries.

Jackson deduces that Quest has replicated itself onto another server farm, one unknown to the team. Quest is no longer confined to a single system and may have taken on a life of its own.